Harmon achieves career goal at UACCB
by Angela Connell
UACCB Freelance Writer
BATESVILLE – The University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville helped 46 year old Sandy Harmon of Batesville achieve her lifelong career goals and aspirations.
Four years ago, Harmon was laid off from Arkansas Eastman when she received a $5,000 retraining program allowance that she used to begin earning her practical nursing degree.
Harmon is currently an LPN at White River Medical Center and is also a member of the Skin Wound Awareness Team. She is currently attending UACCB to earn a registered nursing degree. She wants to concentrate in wound care so that she can further her career at WRMC and eventually become a certified wound care specialist. She will finish the LPN to RN program in December 2009.
"The instructors (at UACCB) are very supportive," she said. "I feel comfortable here. My instructors care. Ms. (Lisa) Crandall and Dennis Broadwater are two of my very favorites! Also, the campus is very accessible."
She said returning to school as a non-traditional student was challenging. "Dennis Broadwater has helped tutor me in the student success center with every class I have ever taken at UACCB," she said. "I don’t know that I would have made it without his help!"
Broadwater, tutoring coordinator, joked with a smile as he said, "She lives with me in here (the UACCB student success center)! No. She works really hard."
Harmon said that she always wanted to be a nurse. "Since I was a little girl my mama would say, 'You always bring home the strays, stray dogs and stray friends,'" she said. "It was like I felt that if I didn't help them they would be lost; I have always been a protector of the weak. I don't know if they were drawn to me because of my strength, or if I was drawn to them because of their weakness. I guess I just love everybody and everything. I didn't know it at the time, but I was being prepared at a young age to care for others."
At 13, she cared for her step-mother when she became ill. "My daddy worked 18 hour days off shore, so I became the keeper of the home. Our roles were reversed," she said. "I cooked, I cleaned and I cared for her when she felt sick. Still I didn’t know my destiny."
Even after she was grown and married she continued to help those she felt needed help. "I remember one time I moved a whole family – a couple, three kids, and a dog – into the house. Ok that was a little much, but they needed me. So for 10 days they all slept in my living room floor, until I could find them housing."
"Over the years, I've come to realize I have been very blessed with a huge heart and a big smile that I love to share. I believe I have a purpose; I am destined to be an angel on earth – a Nurse!"
